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By Jackie CalmesTHE NEW YORK TIMES • Thursday August 29, 2013 7:26 AM

WASHINGTON — As tensions mount and expectations slip lower for any bipartisan consensus on a long-term deficit-reduction plan, a group of Republican senators will resume talks today with senior presidential advisers after a lapse that has lasted weeks.

The two sides had said they would meet during the August recess, but the gathering at the White House will be the first in that time.

Neither side expressed optimism in interviews, with talks snagged on the same issues that killed past bipartisan efforts: Republicans’ demands for deeper Medicare cuts and President Barack Obama’s insistence that they, in return, agree to higher taxes on the wealthy and some corporations.

The apparent lack of progress after months of intermittent meetings suggests that the effort could soon be sidelined, if not ended, as the president and Congress turn to more-pressing work on measures to finance the government and increase the nation’s borrowing limit before October deadlines.

Without the spending measures, the government would shut down on Oct. 1; without a higher debt limit, the nation would be unable to pay bills after mid-October and would risk another financial crisis.

The goal when the bipartisan meetings began last winter, with Obama inviting Republicans to dinner after his second inauguration, was to agree on a multiyear fiscal deal before the fall that could ease efforts to pass annual spending bills and increase the debt limit. Now it is probably too late.

Even so, the discussion with the group of senators “is the only game in town right now,” said an administration official, who declined to be identified in speaking about the delicate talks. “I don’t know that they will be the final deciders at the end of the day. It might have to be a group that rises out of the House,” where Republicans have a majority.

The group includes eight Republicans who are not members of either the Senate leadership or the key committees for spending and taxes.

Obama turned to them, and others, after Republican leaders — Speaker John Boehner in the House and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell — made it clear that after three years of budget battles, dead ends and partial compromises, they were finished negotiating with the president.